ABSTRACT
Territorial boundaries are one of the defining features of sovereign statehood. States assert absolute authority over what goes on within those lines and are expected to make almost no claims beyond them. Although territory can appear to be a naturally occurring phenomenon, an area of land, it is actually more than that. Territory is, in short, a strategy of political control. The territorial structure of modern politics emerged out of a complex set of processes in early modern Europe, in which developments in the technology of mapping played an integral role. The transformation in the visual language of mapping – and its widespread adoption as a key tool of trade, learning and governance – made possible the shift from the complex, overlapping authority structures of the Middle Ages to the territorial exclusivity of the modern state. Mapping has been transformed in the past several decades to a degree unseen since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
